CMT's 'Working Class' gives creator a chance to look through her mother's eyes

The cast of CMT's first scripted show, "Working Class," appeared at the Television Critics Association's Winter Press Tour and it was hard to focus on just one of them.

Of course, we had "Mary Tyler Moore" star and seven-time Emmy winner
Ed Asner, who knew how to work the room. Then, we had cute-as-a-button
Melissa Peterman, who you'll remember from
"Reba." We can go on about the handsome
Patrick Fabian ("Gigantic") and
Steve Kazee, but we have to acknowledge who really got our attention.

Executive producer,
Jill Cargerman, created the sitcom based on her own experiences. "My mother moved us to [Chicago's] northern suburbs," she says. "Very much as Carli does in the show, to give us the advantages of the schools and the community and the community support that we hadn't -- that she hadn't had growing up."

Cargerman admits that she resented her mother for the move at the time and didn't realize the challenges she faced economically and socially to give her a better shot.

"It seemed like everyone else had more than we did, and only now do I realize that I was probably a little bit of a brat and that my mom was kind of a hero," she says. "And hopefully Carli Mitchell comes off as that woman who is both trying to take care of her family as well as being an adult in the circumstance: dating, trying to make friends, trying to make friends with unlikely characters like Ed's character, Hank, on the show. So I think I'm trying to celebrate that now with the show."

And then Peterman says, "So you don't resent her anymore is what you are saying?" And Cargerman replied, "No, I love her."